Granite Statue

The Granite Statue is possibly the toughest fight in the entire game, and many people suggest just running past him instead of fighting. He has an incredible number of HP (right around 1,000), a very high Resistance to Sharp weapons (60% damage reduction), and wields the terrifying Mace of Destruction, one of the most powerful weapons in the game (It deals 20-53 Blunt damage per hit)!

If you are drooling over his Mace of Destruction, however, and are up to the challenge, there are a few tricks to successfully (and by successfully I mean you’ll probably only have to revert to your last save 4 or 5 times) defeat the Granite Statue.

I’ll be honest.. in a straight fight between your party and the Granite Statue, you will lose. He can take out a fighter like Bruno or Sandra in less than 10 rounds, and will be laughing at you as your weapons practically bounce off of him. The secret to possibly defeating him is to exploit what I’m going to call the ‘Sleep Effect’.

The sleep effect is a strange thing. I’m not entirely sure if it’s unique to the Granite Statue, if it works on other NPCs too, or even if it’s specific to the fact that I’m playing the game under Sheepshaver OS9 emulation on a MacBook Pro instead of the Mac Classic it was probably designed for (I don’t believe this to be the case, however). In a nutshell, the Granite Statue is sleeping when you first encounter it, and until it wakes up, it won’t attack you.

One of the first things that most people notice about the room the Statue is in (The Circular Room) is that the doors slam after a character tries to open one, trapping the character in the room for a turn as the door automatically slams shut again. This effect always wakes up the Statue, who proceeds to devastate the party until they manage to get the door back open and somehow escape.

What does this mean in terms of fighting the big guy? You only have one chance at him, the very first time you meet him. Yup, running past him early in the game and coming back later with a maxed out party isn’t going to work well. It is possible to do, but the damage sustained from the outset of the fight will probably make the final fight against Setmoth impossible.

I’ve identified a peculiar bit of coding around the checking the game does to see if the Granite Statue will wake up from damage. There appear to be two factors involved in determining if the Statue will wake up:

First, if your characters are in a party, the only character the game seems to check the damage of is the party leader.

Second, the more injured the Statue gets, the more likely a small amount of damage dealt by the party leader is to wake him.

Armed with this knowledge, the trick to fighting the Statue seems fairly obvious. Give Titus the worst Sharp weapon you can find, give Bruno and Eolene the best Blunt weapons, and start pounding on the guy! The theory is beautiful, the reality is less perfect. While it is true that you can attack the Statue for dozens of rounds without him waking up using this method, he will eventually wake up, and his wrath is horrific once he does.

To make matters worse, another annoyance you will almost definitely encounter is the fact that weapons eventually break, especially in the fight against the near-indestructible Granite Statue! You will need to bring backup weapons, and be prepared to switch to them mid-fight when your primary ones break.

Here has been my strategy:

Pre-Fight:

Make sure everyone in the party has full HP. Titus will more than likely have to sleep before the fight.

Equip Titus with the Curvy Dagger: it’s probably the worst Sharp weapon in the game so far, but it has a good durability. Give him the Leather Bludgeon as a backup weapon, and have him wear the Chain Mail to reduce the amount of Blunt damage he takes.

Equip Bruno with the Leather Armour. Once Titus drops, Bruno needs the Blunt damage resistance too. Keep Bruno using his Gnarly Club, as it’s actually one of the best Blunt weapons in the game, and has a very high durability. It should last Bruno the entire battle.

Make sure both Titus and Bruno have sleep potions in their inventories. At the very least Titus is going to make use of one, and Bruno might have to as well.

Have Titus lead the party into the Circular Room. It might seem like it would be better to have Bruno lead the party, after all, he has more HP than Titus. I have tested this scenario extensively, and have confirmed that it fails. Bruno and Eolene both have better Blunt skill than Titus, and it is very important to have these two rack up as much damage as possible on the Statue before it wakes up. Having Bruno using the Curvy Dagger removes your best source of damage dealing, while Eolene doesn’t have the HP to survive even an instant with the Statue.

Immediately attack the Granite Statue!

The Fight:

As long as Titus does no more than 4 damage on a hit (the Curvy Dagger is perfect, doing 1-4 damage per hit to the Statue), the Statue will stay asleep for a very long time. Hopefully by the time he wakes up, you’ve done at least 800 damage to him!

Watch carefully for Eolene’s staff to break. The moment it does, have her wield the Rusted Mace, and go back to pounding on the Statue. There’s a neat trick to switching weapons on the fly. Type ‘attack <target> with <weapon>’ to instantly drop the old (broken) weapon and start attacking with the new one!

When the Statue finally wakes up and starts hammering on Titus, immediately have Titus switch to the Leather Bludgeon; No more messing around with minimizing his damage. The Statue is immune to stunning, but it’s still the next best Blunt weapon available at this point. Titus is only going to get a few rounds to attack before the Statue drops him to critical HP anyway.

When Titus gets down on HP to the point where the next hit will kill him, cross your fingers and have him drink a sleep potion.

If you’re lucky, Titus will act before the Statue and fall asleep, and the Statue will move on to a new target. If you’re less lucky, the Statue will miss Titus and he’ll fall asleep, or the Statue will just knock Titus unconscious (both have the same effect as above). If you’re unlucky, the Statue will take one last swing at Titus and outright kill him. Time to revert and try again.

With Titus down (but not dead), hopefully the Statue will choose to go after Bruno next. If it goes after Eolene, however, just have her ‘join’ Bruno and the Statue will switch to attacking him.

More than likely, the Statue will be on death’s door by this point. With a great deal of luck, Bruno and Eolene will still be standing when the Statue falls. Worst case, have Bruno chug a sleep potion the moment before the statue kills him, and hope that Eolene can finish the job solo.

Again, this fight requires the exploitation of the unusual behavior of the Statue, careful weapon and armor selection, at least one well-timed quaffing of a sleep potion during battle, and a great deal of luck. It will almost definitely take multiple tries, so make sure you are saved (at least at the start of the fight) so you can revert and try again.

So you’ve defeated the Granite Statue.. and can’t pick up the Mace!?

Sorry, did I forget to mention something? Yup.. the Mace of Destruction turns out to be one HEAVY weapon. In fact, even Bruno with no equipment at all is not strong enough to lift the thing! All is not lost, however. There is a character who can wield it: Sandra. Unfortunately, you haven’t met her yet. You’ll have to leave the Mace behind for now, and have Sandra come back for it once you recruit her.

Is it worth it?

Well, maybe. Yes, it’s a total pain to get, and yes, it means having Sandra backtrack to recover it. But, it’s hands down the best weapon out there! Sandra wielding the Mace of Destruction is a thing of beauty, and it does wonders against Setmoth and the enemies before him. Most of all, you’ve got bragging rights. You’ve taken down one of the toughest enemies in an ancient Macintosh RPG that no-one today has heard of!! Hmm..